What a thrust of jet engine can do.

At the end of a lonely cemetery road in a small Texas town, Norm Lanier toils to bring the dead back to life. He does not use a witch’s brew, lightning, or voodoo magic; although it is rather easy to apply these things metaphorically to his work. Take one photograph of a dead ancestor, add some computer wizardry, swirl it around, toss in a pinch of special laminate and viola! The result is a Haunted Portrait. Arthur C. Clark once said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. The technology employed by Norm is known as Lenticular Photography, a technique that allows an image to shift based on the angle from which you view it. For example, if you stand in front of one of these visual marvels you may see a pleasant young woman staring back at you. Move slightly to the side and she is transformed into a flesh-eating ghoul. Norm has assembled an impressive Rouges Gallery of horror, with images ranging from the curious to the darkly sublime. While some are suitable for children, others have the power to make your blood run cold. Each gruesome character comes complete with a chilling tale to describe their decline into evil; an extra dimension that may just keep you up at night. Haunted Portraits are popular items for Halloween spook houses, but they also delight pranksters who enjoy hanging them in inconspicuous places so as to startle the unwary. Norm receives regular emails from customers describing the simple pleasures of terrorizing their friends and family. The Lanier family plot includes Norm’s wife and daughter, who help create the sinister back-stories and arrange the shipping of his masterpieces world-wide. You can view his work online at your own risk, or contact him at: Norm Lanier Haunted Portraits 281-814-0880 norm@hauntedportraits.com http://www.hauntedportraits.com

Air France Flight 4590 was a Concorde flight from Charles de Gaulle International Airport near Paris, France to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, New York, and operated by Air France. On July 25, 2000 it crashed in Gonesse, France. All 100 passengers and nine crew on board the flight, as well as four people on the ground, were killed.

The official investigation was conducted by the France's accident investigation bureau, the BEA, and it was published on December 14, 2004. It concluded that the crash was caused by a titanium strip, part of a thrust reverser, that fell from a Continental Airlines DC-10 that had taken off about four minutes earlier. This metal fragment punctured Concorde's tyres, which then disintegrated. A piece of rubber hit the fuel tank and broke an electrical cable. The impact caused a shockwave that fractured the fuel tank some distance from the point of impact. This caused a major fuel leak from the tank, which then ignited. The crew shut down engine number 2 in response to a fire warning but were unable to retract the landing gear, hampering the aircraft's climb. With engine number 1 surging and producing little power, the aircraft was unable to gain height or speed, entering a rapid pitch-up then a violent descent, rolling left. The impact occurred with the stricken aircraft tail-low, crashing into the Hotelissimo Hotel in Gonesse. According to the report, the piece had not been approved by the US Federal Aviation Administration.

COPYRIGHT: NATIONAL GEOGRPHIC

A beautiful scale turbine-powered heli has a hard landing at the 2007 ANZAC jet meeting held in Tokoroa NZ.

This is a jet cat HP5 powered Bell 230. These are the first few flights while still triming out the controls ... heli is just over 6' long.

The 60 mm rotor diameter, 3.3 grams Picoflyer is the smallest size electric powered contra-rotating coaxial-rotor RC helicopter ever built. It is battery powered and it uses the Proxflyer concept to give it inherent stability.